Entropy
by Water.Under.The.Bridge
Summary: -Revised-A mission that's Murphy's Law embodied is enough to bring anybody together. Worst case scenario: you can claim you read this for the novelty pairing.


_Just keep moving._

_Just keep moving._

_Just k-_

Hyuuga Hinata had to drop down in front of the enormous branch she had just been about to leap onto in order to dodge a rather impressive collection of kunai now deeply imbedded in redwood.

Using her momentum and just a little bit of chakra, like Sakura had taught her to do, Hinata continued to swing forward under the branch, lightly grasping it all the while.

Bark gently scraped her palms and then, once her body was pointed straight, like a horizontal arrow, she let go entirely and somersaulted forward and in.

Rolling tightly through the air, Hinata flipped her legs out and bent them just so to prepare for impact, like coiled springs.

Landing on top of the positively Brobdingnagian redwood's branch, Hinata whipped her head around to see three sets of senbon, eight to each set, barreling towards her.

Briefly entertaining the thought of parrying them with a shruiken, she decided using Gentle Fist would get the job done better.

Her feet quickly slid into position, one slightly in front of the other, weight balanced on both, but the majority on the hind leg, hands out in front, one palm resting upwards, the other bent at elbow and facing the rapidly approaching senbon.

Just as the projectiles came within spitting distance, Hinata let loose a small amount of chakra directed to her palms, enough to conserve energy, but enough to be judicious. Right when they intercepted her, she _poked _ the needle-point of each of the twenty-four senbon with a precise amount of chakra applied to each finger tip and deflected them all upwards, were Hinata knew another enemy dwelled...

…And heard twenty-one make impact, the two most important hits being the one on his throat that chakra had forced the senbon all the way through and the one in his eye socket that was submerged deeply into his skull, as she observed while his lifeless body fell from the tops of the trees he had been camouflaged within down to the earth about one-hundred-eighty to two-hundred feet below.

She kept to her form and chakra flow, waiting for her initial attacker to make himself known.

Choosing Gentle Fist hadn't been a whim. Tired of the chase and wishing to face her predator head on than defend herself pointlessly, Hinata implored the enemy nin politely and waited patiently for him to reveal himself so they could fight like true ninjas.

"Come out, please."

Her voice twinkled out into the humid mid-afternoon air like a quiet bell.

With a small gust of wintry wind, along came a six-foot two male dressed in green camouflage, a black mask, and a cream outer cloak. Similar dress to the man who had just met his end at this man's needles, almost certainly a comrade, but she could not make out the insignia on his glinting hitai-ite from its place under the shadow of a fir tree in dying daylight.

When the enemy ninja spoke, it was with a gravelly baritone that caught a little in between words, trying to make up for lost breath. Obviously, the man was worn.

"Give me the seed."

Because she was exhausted more than any innate immaturity, her first reaction was to giggle. She quelled it. Out of a sense of self respect, you see.

Now, if Hinata knew anything about the Forest Country, it was that those in any position of power hired all their guards, assassins, and ninja from outside the area.

Logically, this nin would have been called in by the local nobleman and given specific orders to guard the seed at all costs, and deal with any threats to it as he deemed necessary.

And there was one loophole in this man's contract.

He would have been paid in advance.

With no sense of loyalty to the seed, his employer, the hunt, and hopefully not his fallen comrade, all Hinata would have to do was convince him that it was in his best interest to leave with paycheck in pocket and his limbs still firmly in tact.

Which wouldn't be too hard if his labored breathing was any indication.

"Sir, do really want to fight me?"

The ninja did not reply. She narrowed her eyes the tiniest bit and put on her Clan Face.

"We can either battle face to face, or you can surrender. I will not yield and I refuse to continue this ridiculous chase. The choice is yours."

Tone hard and with a face set like stone, Hinata was tired.

She had been on the run for ten hours, ever since the break-in at the estate where the team first grabbed the seed. The seed was a new, laboratory-harvested unborn breed of flower. It was priceless.

In the debriefing, Tsunade-sama had said that it had the potential to be the next big breakthrough in medicine, but to what end, she did not elaborate.

The team had been put together by Tsunade, each member hand picked according to each phase of the plan all ready put in place to snatch the seed from an over-eager aristocrat in the Forest Country who had decided to pool all his money in on the seed project with all the enthusiasm of a kid preparing for the science fair.

The aristocrat had hired fifteen of the surrounding nations' top botanists, chemists, and biologists and put them at the head of the payroll; this was enough incentive to get them to crank out the scientific miracle that was the puny little seed in a cushioned phial, wrapped in soft velvet, an inch-and-a-half lining of foam, enclosed by a four-inch-by-four inch iron cube locked up by a heavy seal and Lilliputian key on a long copper-link chain that reached half-way down Hinata's torso that was tucked under her shirt. And no one was getting under her shirt.

It had taken three days for the team, which had consisted of three jounin, two chuunin, and one sannin, to arrive at the aristocrat's estate from the border of the Forest Country.

Hinata knew only three of them and could recall only two of their names at the first meeting. She was one of the jounin and had recognized Ebisu-san and Jiraiya-sama, as well as one chuunin that she simply could not put a name to.

The other chuunin, Otsune-chan, had befriended her early on in the mission; they had bonded over the fact that they were the only female members of the team, which was really pretty lucky since there really weren't very many active kunoichi to begin with.

Once they had finally arrived at the aristocrat's sprawling abode, Ebisu, who had volunteered to be leader of the mission in order to prove he was ready to take on full jounin status at long last, immediately put the plan in motion.

Hinata had been placed on the team to search out all decoys, traps, and threats, visible and not, for which most Hyuuga were reserved a spot on missions for.

Jiraiya was there for unlocking all protection seals and defense mechanisms placed on and around the seed.

Getting past the cast-iron front gate had been easy enough; they all ninja-hopped over it. The heavy entrance door had a light seal on it that took all of fifteen seconds for Jiraiya to dismantle, then the team had proceeded northwest, straight to the laboratory sector.

Security they encountered was made up of dim-witted, but uniformly big, barrel-chested men. These guards only popped up once they got to the second floor, and even then, most of the henchmen were sleeping at that early hour of the day; the morning sun had not yet dawned when team of leaf nin broke into the estate. It was chuunins' job to take them out, so the other three could conserve energy for their own tasks.

After about seven minutes of Hinata predicting the arrival of any security and the chuunin had taking care and disposing of an estimated twenty of them, the team reached the laboratory. A huge stainless steel door stood ominously between the leaf ninja and their prize, as well as clashing horribly with the dark wooden walls the entire estate was made of; both transgressions would be its ultimate downfall.

Ebisu hastily ordered the Toad Sage to break the seal, clearly an unnecessary command that had Jiraiya sending a fleeting annoyed glance at Ebisu, who Hinata believed not to understand that being leader of a mission did not make one any wiser than nor overlord of more seasoned sannin that already knew what to do and when to do it well before the _team leader_ could think to open his mouth in order to boss anyone else around.

Not that she had any opinion about it or anything.

This second seal was far more complex and Jiraiya took a solid two minutes to solve the puzzle and an additional sixty second to unlock it; Ebisu spent this entire process intently watching Jiraiya's red clad back shift as he delved deep into the multifaceted seal and tapping his foot against the fancy white marble floor.

Hinata observed the seal with the Byakugan and was startled to realize just how intricate it was. _How on earth is he able to understand this monstrosity without using some sort of chakra sensory enhancement jutsu or kekkei genkai?_ The man was a genius, sannin or no sannin. And Hinata found herself impressed.

When the seal was unraveled and the stainless steel door pushed wide open by Jiraiya, Ebisu ordered the whole team to go inside and close the door behind them instead of leaving the three chuunin outside the door to deal with any unexpected company like Hinata expected him to.

For a moment, she considered advising the team leader to leave at least one of them stay by the door and watch for trouble or have someone check out the exits in the lab before closing the only sure way out.

She chose not to because Hinata feared Ebisu would become defensive and endanger the team by trying to prove his authority. Knowing that he was a good man did not mean he was above such childishness.

After all, it was his first mission as a full-time jounin team leader. Who could blame the guy?

The laboratory was a surprisingly normal sized room filled with all sorts odd shiny instruments, clear tubes, bubbly things on bunsen burners, and science texts of disproportionately thick spines, but short length spread out across tables throughout the room. Two large widows let light in from the northern face of the estate, which offered a view of a short expanse of field and a resurgence of forest with great, towering trees unlike anything Hinata had ever seen. Ravens drifted about the forest and tall grassed fields like angry dark ghosts in the bare, pre-dawn light, cawing noisily.

At the center of the room was a tall circular-prismic pedestal of orange veined creamy marble; upon it, a square cushion lay and on that cushion laid a tiny seed.

Above the cut off of the pedestal was a thick, equally circular glass encasement that ran all the way up to the ceiling. Hinata stepped forward and switched silently to the Byakugan to examine the weak points in the glass when Ebisu issued his command.

"Hyuuga-san, figure out how to break the glass, and quickly. We need to get the hell out of here now."

Holding her jaw tightly to keep herself from back-sassing him-which she was now in the habit of doing when the occasion called for it, what with her newfound backbone and all-she proceeded to scrutinize the encasement. While she found all the weak spots and pressed fingertips full of chakra to each one, she thought, _He states the obvious too much, _and in a rather un-Hinata like way, too. Even with her backbone- -and all.

Ebisu was getting antsy and it wasn't helping the mission go any more smoothly. Plus, protocol dictated an absolute minimum in communication inside high-staked and technically illegal jobs like these.

"Step back, please," she requested quietly with her head down and muscles relaxed and ready to spring back.

Six chakra-powered taps pattered lightly on the surface of the encasement.

The glass shattered in a shower of tiny sparkling crystal light prisms that fell from the ceiling down in a rainbow waterfall that caught the light. Hinata sprang effortlessly backwards, away from the spray of glass and towards the southward facing wall. No alarms sounded and no guards popped up. Ebisu breathed out sharply through his nose in relief and pushed his glasses farther up on his face.

They had two minutes left at best until _some_ sort of alarm went off, and the whole team felt that inevitability creeping up on them with climbing anticipation.

Jiraiya came up behind the pedestal, glass crunching under his sandals, with the cushioned phial in one hand and a pair of tweezers in the other. Very carefully, he picked up the seed with the tweezers and dropped it inside the phial, then placed that in a velvet pouch he took out of his pocket on the inside of shirt.

One of the male chuunin produced the four-inch-by-four-inch iron cube with an inch-and-a-half lining of foam krazy glued to it on the inside. The chuunin set the open cube down on the pedestal and Jiraiya gently put the pouch down inside it and secured it under the strap sewed into the cube. He closed the lid and, since Jiraiya had already laid the seal on the cube, he simply activated it with a small surge of chakra and a couple hand seals, and flipped the locking ring down.

Sticking a hand in under his dark green shirt and the mesh underneath, he grabbed something and pulled it out, through his long white mane, and over his head. A long copper chain dangled from his hand and a Lilliputian key swayed from its bottom. Jiraiya fixed the key inside the lock on the box and turned it clockwise until there was a click as the bolt slid home.

He picked up the box, situated it under an arm, straightened, and turned to Hinata, casually holding out the necklace to her as he spoke the first words to her that she could recall sharing with him the whole mission.

"Keep it safe for me." As she reached out and took the lengthy chain, her fingers just brushed over the tan, dry skin of his last two knuckles. It was an accident of course, but when their eyes met, deepest black on purest white, it was not accidental. A frisson of the most cliché and jolting sort shot through them both in least casual of ways.

Hinata pulled the necklace away from him and slid it over her head, all the while watching him.

"Come on, let's go home- -hurry up!" Ebisu nervously ordered as he moved toward one of the windows.

"Wait Ebisu, let me check the windows for any-"

Jiraiya never finished that sentence.

Ebisu pried the window on the right open, beyond heeding the Toad Sage's calm words as anxiety took the reigns. And as the window slid upward, an almost inaudible _fizzing_ sort of sound hit the ears of every ninja of the Leaf in the room.

There was an immeasurably short moment of silence where each person looked at another member of their team- Ebisu stared at Jiraiya through his round sunglasses, the two male chuunin looked at each other, Otsune glanced at Hinata, and Hinata peeked up at the sannin- just before the northern wall exploded from the right window outward.

Blinding light and fire consumed Ebisu and the two chuunin by the window; the other three were slammed against the southern wall with the force of the explosion.

Dents appeared in the wall from lab tables, blasted bits of marble and dark wood, and the impact of the ninja, who were practically imbedded into the wall. Jiraiya peeled himself out of his man-shaped dent with an ache in his left thigh after a moment, but did not have time to examine it as the building rocked when fire made friends with an unnamed volatile chemical. Bunsen burners knocked to the floor lit up books and furniture throughout the laboratory.

Dazzling spots of light tinkled against Hinata's eyelids and she struggled to pull herself free of the wall. After she pried her body out of her whole in the wall, she struggled to stand as sudden dizziness struck her. Listing dangerously to the right, Hinata caught herself on the southern wall, and once her vision cleared, all she could see was fire from the far side of the room, grey smoke from burning debris, and black smoke from chemical fire.

She turned her head to the left and saw Otsune lying twisted on the floor with her face against the marble.

"Otsune-chan!" Hinata called out and kneeled next to her newfound friend- -was about to lift the chuunin's head when she found that Otsune's foot was on fire.

Immediately, she signed for _Suiton: Water Release _and water generated from the air in a surprisingly decent amount considering the room was aflame. Water shot out from Hinata's hand and doused the flames that had, by that point, reached halfway up Otsune's leg.

The stench of charred flesh wafted around the room and Hinata used _Hyoton: Ice Release_ to encase the chuunin's leg in a cast of hard ice. The smell continued to wreak havoc on her olfactory senses, and that was when she realized that all that remained of half of their team was a mess of smoking half-corpses.

Ebisu's body was nowhere to be seen, which was when she came to the depressing conclusion that his whole body must have been literally blown to pieces, which made sense because he was at the origin of the blast, so really, Ebisu was probably scattered all around the room, which, in fact, meant there was likely a bit of him in her hair. . . A shadow falling over her came as a welcome distraction that allowed her to end that unpleasant line of thought.

"Shit." Eloquent, concise, and undeniably apposite. Again, she could not help herself. She was impressed.

"The guards will arrive any moment. Could we burn the chuunin properly?" Hinata inquired softly. On the inside, she was beseeching the sannin to give them a respectful "burial," even if it was just cremating them with a _Katon_ and leaving the rest to nature.

"I'll take care of their remains, you just get your friend ready to move and tell me went security gets here," Jiraiya said evenly. That sounded perfectly reasonable to Hinata, who leaned down to get Otsune to come around. She shook her shoulders a little and lightly called her name. Finally, Otsune's eyelids flicked open.

"Ow. . . shit." With a prolonged moan of pain, she heaved herself forward into a sitting position, while Hinata activate the Byakugan.

"Jiraiya-sama's words exactly. . . Thirty seconds until the guards arrive!" Hinata muttered the first of that sentence to herself and finished with a call across the ruined lab and through the smoke and flame to the sannin's turned back, who raised a hand in response.

"Come on, Otsune-chan, we need to get you up." Bracing herself against the jounin's black-clad shoulder, she lifted up to a low squat, but could not straighten any more for fear of slipping on her cast of ice. Otsune began to break a bit of a sweat; it was beginning to heat up in the slowly burning laboratory.

"Dang, Hinata-chan. You sure fixed me up nice," Otsune said with a fair amount of faked enthusiasm to make her friend think it hurt less than she knew the other knew it did.

"Don't worry about sliding around on the floor, I made the bottom flat," assured Hinata. But when Otsune tried to stand fully, her burned leg crumpled and she wailed woefully.

"It's pretty numb, but it just won't support the weight," explained Otsune. "You'll just have to leave me behind."

"No."

"That's ju-"

"No. . . Fourteen seconds!"

Another backwards wave.

"Ready?"

"For what?" Hinata braced her shoulder once more for the weight of her friend, this time to bear the full weight that Otsune's body could not. She flipped the chuunin's head over her shoulder facing downward and Otsune's stomach rested on her shoulder blade.

"Oof… Am I too heavy? I know I need to lay off the sprinkled donuts, but it's really hard to find a decent breakfast when you can't make cereal right!" Really, Otsune should have protested more, but she wanted to live, and letting the jounin carry her out of this sticky situation certainly wouldn't kill her.

"You're fine, Otsune-chan. Seven seconds!"

"Let's go," Jiraiya suggested, and he finally turned so Hinata could see the stolen vase in his hands.

At the most unexpected of times and in the most unexpected of places, she smiled.

"Yes."

With a bound out the jagged remains of he northern wall and straight into the tall, tall trees of the Forest Country, Jiraiya, Hinata, the incapacitated Otsune, and the ashes of two nameless chuunin left the manor of the eccentric nobleman and the remnants of Ebisu the team leader behind.

Stopping at the fat tree the team had dropped their travel packs off at three miles away from the estate, Jiraiya sealed all six bundles and the iron cube inside his customary giant scroll, fit the strap over his firm chest, and took off after the Hyuuga, who had continued to charge forward after he peeled off.

As they traveled quickly among the breezy heights of the gargantuan trees, Jiraiya stuck a hand in the vase-turned urn when it moved him to do so and raised an open palm filled with ashes into the air and let them drift along with will of the wind.

Not too weighed down by Otsune to be tired, but still not making a very good pace to keep the henchmen-which she could see in the distance-far behind them for comfort, Hinata spit balled for a while and finally decided to run the idea past Jiraiya to drop her friend off at a hospital after three and half long hours of travel through the immense forest.

"Do you think it would be better if I find Otsune-chan a hospital? You could create a shadow clone of me with a chakra signature and lead them in a different direction until I catch back up with you."

Jiraiya glanced sideways at her briefly with deep, dark eyes. "You're up to it chakra-wise? I could take her to the hospital instead if you need to take a load off."

"No, I'll be fine. I'm going to scout for any towns or cities big enough to have a medical center, Jiraiya-sama."

"It's just Jiraiya. And I happen to know somewhere we can dump her off until we can get some back-up here."

"Is anyone going to ask me what I think we should do?" Otsune wanted to know.

No answer came.

So it came that Hinata and Jiraiya split up for an hour, she heading to the hospital and he leading their trackers astray.

While Jiraiya took the liberty of creating one extra pair of clones of himself and Hinata- he had the other pair head in the opposite direction, then created two more after both the clone pair and the genuine articles that also branched off in opposite directions, and did the same with third set of clones that had three pairs, all of which circled back to further confuse the henchmen-Hinata took the liberty of getting Otsune nice and comfy at a small, rather motel-like hospital and handing her half of the money she'd brought with her on this mission, a portion that she always designated as an "emergency cash stash."

What she didn't tell the chuunin was that it was her own funds, not village-issued capital reserved for missions outside the country.

"You be comfortable here, right Otsune-chan? I could find you a better hiding place until we get some back-up if you feel to exposed here, it just won't be this . . . cozy," Hinata queried doubtfully.

It felt like desertion, but they could not afford to keep plodding along at the pace they were without implicating Konoha in the straight-up _theft_ they'd been ordered to commit.

"I'll be fine. This is like vacation for me, except I'm still getting paid for being in the field and I get free breakfast in bread!"

"Not donuts, though. After all, this is a hospital," gently teased Hinata.

Otsune whacked her arm with one of her pillows. "No donuts."

"They should be here within the next two weeks," Hinata said, switching to a more serious tone.

"Oh, I dunno Hinata-chan, the ice on my leg might melt by then." It was Hinata's turn to take a swing at the invalid's arm. She knew she'd probably kept the nin's leg from rotting off, and the resident medical staff had been _very impressed._

"Tell them to take their time, alright?"

"Got it." And with that Hinata stood from her perch on the edge of the chuunin's bed and smiled gently at her one last time. "I'll see you soon."

"Soon," Otsune said in substitute for 'goodbye.' 'Goodbye' was too heavy a word, came with to many connotations for most ninja to use it lightly.

Then she left.

Spotting the real Jiraiya through the Byakugan from very, very far away, Hinata took a deep breath in through her nose and out through her mouth. _Calm, I'm calm._ Then she took off after him, taking care not to intersect paths with their trackers. The whole time, she could only think about two things.

One was how the team, how _she_ should have been able to prevent that explosion. How one of the team-especially her-should have immediately searched for tags, booby traps, and what have you before even letting the door to the door to the lab close, how Ebisu should have let her do so before he tried to open the window, or at least checked it himself, which he very apparently had not.

How he also ordered her to break the glass before examining all the exits for danger, and how if she had protested, it would have looked an awful lot like insubordination.

The only other thing on her mind was that _moment_ Ebisu had equally ruined. Jiraiya had seemed . . . as unnerved as she was. Perhaps it was just the shock of the sensation, the combined force of both of their surprise; maybe the only reason it felt so good was that it felt _kind of nice_ and that mixed with the knowledge that it _wasn't supposed to_ and amplified the feeling tenfold.

Not that she over analyzed things.

After the better part of an hour, the jounin caught up with the sannin, fell into pace with him.

"Is she all set?"

"Yes." Hinata chuckled tiredly. "Otsune-chan is treating the whole situation like it's a week at the spa." Jiraiya 'hmmm'ed' in acknowledgement.

She sighed. "I know . . . I know that it won't do any good to talk about it now, but . . . Why was Ebisu made team leader?" This was asked softly and with as little insinuation as possible. It would not do to speak ill of the dead.

There was a pause.

Certainly Jiraiya agreed with her that he had made an awful leader; Ebisu had been too eager to prove himself, which made him too jumpy, and in that, premature in action, which in turn had gotten people killed.

"Sometimes people wait a lifetime for a change that takes their lives the next day." He sighed, too. "He was a tokubetsu jounin for as long as I can remember. I guess . . . training others how to be ninja wasn't enough for him. The guy was as sharp as a whip, but he wasn't made for the field." This time, it was Hinata who 'hmmm'ed' in response.

And that was all that was said between them for the next two hours.

Two hours later, in fact, was when Hinata notified the sannin that there were five trackers left and wasn't that odd that there were so few when the estate was so big?

"Well actually, I sort of whittled 'em down a little with a few shadow clone decoys a while back. When you were getting the chuunin situated," he explained a bit sheepishly, a hand behind his head in an all together too familiar a movement. He'd forgotten to mention that before.

"Oh, good. They're closing in on us. At our speed in relation to theirs, I estimate that we have about half an hour before they catch up to us," she spoke coolly. Keeping up a professional front was getting tougher by the minute.

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" Jiraiya asked slyly, with a raised eyebrow wiggle that, typically, got him slapped in the face. But Hinata didn't seem to notice.

She glanced sideways at him and raised _her_ eyebrows with a smile. "Of course."

And quickly following that, Jiraiya remembered, _Oh, I forgot. She's the Hyuuga heir. _Mentally, he slapped his forehead. _I almost took that the wrong way. She's probably more sheltered than a baby penguin in the Land of Snow. In the middle of winter._

So it came that they split up, going in what at first appeared to be different directions, but were really weaving paths that intersected at a rough twenty minute interval.

The sannin and jounin made a unanimous decision to avoid actually confronting their trackers because, while they both had enough energy and chakra to fight, it wasn't necessary for them to intercept the other nin and besides, they really were quite worn. Hinata's head ached and she often found the thoughts in her head drifting away against her will. Both of their feet were killing them and Jiraiya's thigh throbbed and oozed, despite the wrappings he'd bound it with hours ago.

Not that anyone ever said any of that. It was more of an understood _yeah we're tired; come at me bitch._

For nearly three hours, the two weaved back and forth, trails meeting one another nine times until their pursuers finally caught up with them. Fir, sequoia, gum, and redwood all blurred into one as she bounded through the fading light of day in the forest, but it was not enough. She could hear the hunter-nin right behind her only fifty feet away and closing in.

_Just keep moving._

_Just keep moving._

_Just k-_

And that was how she found herself trying to sweet-talk a tracker out of the pursuit.

The shadowed man put his hands hips and heaved a deep sigh, nodding his head as he said, "Yeah…"

in a rather resigned tone. "Yeah." Then he briefly gazed down at Hinata and said, "You're right."

And as he turned different direction than both of them had come from and headed in, he called quite casually over his shoulder. "You're wise, kunoichi." He paused to glance back at her once and said quietly, "That's quite a gift."

And then he melted into the shadows.

For a moment, she just stood there with arms dangling down at her sides and her bloodline limit still active, gazing confusedly at the shady space the hunter-nin had just vacated, not really sure if that had actually just worked or not.

Then, using the Byakugan, she found the sannin fighting off three of the eccentric landowner's employees not far above and to her left, and jumped across a couple widely spaced branches to attack from behind. She assessed his position as she leaped among the lofty trees and her thick, black spandex ankle-length pants and long-sleeved shirt, which felt more like Egyptian cotton, kept her legs warm enough through the gusts of wintry wind that blew through.

Jiraiya had just taken out a henchman with what looked like the man's own pike, and his limp body passed by Hinata as she ascended to the party of three above her.

The Toad Sannin must've taken another enemy nin out already, then. That would make five total.

While Jiraiya blasted powerful jets of water at a tracker, the other shot out big balls of fire; the combination sputtered out together between the ninja to create a great deal of steam. Into the haze, the sannin threw a single kunai and whirled around to meet huge, rapidly growing vines rapping around his legs with a mouthful of acid. Blackish-purple acid shot from his puffed cheeks onto the vines, which swiftly withered and died.

The hunter who had cast the ninjutsu gaped at this, a moment of inattention that cost him greatly as the Hyuuga came up behind him with a finger loaded with chakra.

The jounin reached deftly over his shoulder and tapped him once on his unguarded heart, the most important and delicate of chakra channels of all human anatomy. Dead upon impact, the nin slumped over like a cooked noodle, and flopped on top of the branch bonelessly before rolling off the limb and falling a very long distance indeed.

Steam cleared away to reveal the last henchman impaled to a sequoia by a single kunai in the middle of his forehead.

"I had that last one in the bag, you know," murmured Jiraiya.

"I know."

And then Hinata took a good look around and came to yet another realization on that long, long day.

They were the only ninja left.


End file.
